Monthly Archives: April 2022

diSConnected: Is Ayn Rand or Mother Teresa better for protecting South Carolinians with disabilities? – South Carolina Public Radio

Posted: April 15, 2022 at 12:11 pm

This story is part of diSConnected, an occasional series from South Carolina Public Radio that looks at how South Carolinians are coping with loneliness and connection after two years in the COVID pandemic.

Brad Morris doesnt want your pity. He doesnt want your guilt. He doesnt even want you to think about other people. He wants you to save your own butt, because if you put all your efforts into saving yourself, you just might save him by accident.

You should ventilate, you should wear a mask, you should vaccinate not because you care about anyone else, screw everyone else, he says. You should do this because its going to help you not contribute to incubating variants that are going to come back and bite you in your ass.

He does think theres still plenty of room to appeal to the kindness of others; plenty of people are good and kind and want to do right by people, he says. But for the ones who just dont seem to get it that walking around carrying and incubating a virus that preys on weakened immune systems is a bad thing, his messaging has changed: Forget about helping others on purpose and embrace the value of selfishness.

Angry as his sentiment might be, theres actually a lot of selflessness in it. Morris, a power-wheelchair user whose physical disabilities can lead to potentially dangerous respiratory problems if he were to contract COVID-19, doesnt want people to get the virus and end up in their own wheelchair nor to end up having to turn to GoFundMe, as he did, to raise the money to buy one.

He worries that people are not thinking of the possibility of being injured or disabled by long-COVID. Thats a sentiment shared by Scarlet Novak, another power-wheelchair user who, despite staying masked and largely removed from the company of others these past two years, got a flu from (they suspect) a few seconds at the doctors office when they were both unmasked.

I just feel like a lot of people are not taking [COVID] as seriously as they should be, Novak says. There are still people who could get sick and be hospitalized because of it.

In February, the Center for American Progress reported that COVID-19 created 1.2 million more people with disabilities in the United States. The article cites U.S. Board of Labor Statistics estimates that roughly 496,000 of those people newly defined as disabled because of COVID complications are in the workforce.

But people are tired of COVID stories. Sources and casual friends alike have told me dozens of times that they no longer listen to or watch the news because its all about COVID. Out in public, few people still wear masks, and mass gatherings and events are proceeding like its 2018 again. And Morris says the world sometimes seems eager to look past people with disabilities as everyone turns back to a normal that a lot of people cant join in on.

He suggests efforts towards harm reduction, not mandates and laws; on getting people to think of simpler things, like considering masks, not because you might get sick, but because someone else might.

But hes not bothering to appeal altruism anymore.

Step one seems to be coming across as human so people will listen to you, he says. Maybe we cant do that and our only, our last, our best hope is to find ways of appealing to peoples self-interest.

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Did the John Birch Society Win in the End? – The Bulwark

Posted: at 12:11 pm

A foundation of the folklore of the American right is the story of how National Reviews William F. Buckley, in the early- to mid-1960s, cast the John Birch Societyand by extension the entire kooky, conspiracist wing of the rightout of the conservative movement.

This was part of a larger struggle for the soul of the right. Older conservative publications such as the American Mercury, which had once been the home of such luminaries as H.L. Mencken and Henry Hazlitt, had turned into a forum for antisemitic conspiracy theoriesbefore eventually being taken over outright by neo-Nazis. The response was an effort by Buckley and other conservative thinkers, with the help of political frontmen Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan, to create a conservative movement with more ideological and philosophical substanceone based not on conspiracy theories or mere reactionary emotions but on ideas. (Too bad he also tried to get rid of Ayn Rand.)

Looking at American politics today, it sure looks like this seminal conservative achievement is unraveling. The Birchers are back. And theyre winning.

The John Birch Society, to refresh your memory, was started in 1958 by a conservative businessman who thought President Eisenhower was secretly a Soviet agent. It had a certain kind of cracked appeal as an easy explanation for various setbacks in the early years of the Cold War. The Soviet domination of Eastern Europe, the Communist takeover of China, the Soviet development of nuclear weaponsthese werent the results of Western mistakes, or large and difficult-to-control social forces, or just the fortunes of war. No, it was all a secret plot, and THEY were lying to you.

This worldview was tremendously popular, more popular than todays conservatives would probably like to admit. In 1962, Barry Goldwater complained, Every other person in Phoenix is a member of the John Birch Society. Im not talking about commie-haunted apple pickers or cactus drunks. Im talking about the highest cast of men of affairs.

The Birchers had such a big following on the right that Buckley, Goldwater, and Reagan hemmed and hawed for years before breaking with them. Even then, it took repeated denunciations, combined with the Birchers increasing notoriety as a national laughingstock, to eventually reduce their appeal and relegate them to the crazy fringes.

Consider the elements of this history:

We have a conspiracy theory that explains everything conservatives think has gone wrong in the world by positing the machinations of a secret cabal that controls everything from the intelligence agencies to the schools.

We have the rapid spread of these crackpot theories to otherwise normal and respectable people in the rank and file of the movement.

We have an attempt to make the conspiracists into the ultimate representatives of opposition to totalitarian communism, and a corresponding attempt to dismiss any conservative critics of the conspiracists as weak-kneed appeasers handing over the country to its enemies.

We have the uneasy balancing act of conservatives in the media and in politics who dont want to denounce the crackpots for fear of angering their partys base.

Isnt this also precisely the state of conservatism today?

We tend to think that our culture war is something new, rising out of the unique challenges of our own era. But youd be surprised how much of it is just the same old culture war being endlessly rehashed.

Todays equivalent of the John Birch Society is the QAnon conspiracy theory, an online grift that got out of hand and became a worldview. It posits its own spectacularly implausible conspiracy theory: That there is a global network of pedophiles who secretly run the world and control our politics so that they can abuse children. This conspiracy theory has in turn spawned other conspiracy theories which claim that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump. It is currently being mainstreamed in attacks on Disney as a corporation bent on grooming children to prepare them for exploitation by pedophiles.

And where are todays conservative leaders, the intellectuals and politicians, the Buckleys and Reagans, who have the authority to shut this down?

Well, Ben Sasse wrote a piece once. But most of todays conservative and Republican leaders are actually trying to hitch themselves to the new John Birchers.

Donald Trump famously refused to denounce the QAnon crazies, describing them only as people who are against pedophiliathe most flattering possible description of the group. Its like saying that the John Birchers were against communism. In both cases, the actual salient characteristic of these groups is their wild, paranoid, evidence-free conspiracy theories.

Trumps sympathy for QAnon helped ease it into the conservative mainstream, and we can see the results in two recent incidents.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is the leading candidate to become the sane Trumpa Republican who can harness Trumps populist appeal, but in a disciplined and calculating way. But after DeSantiss defenders rushed out to assure everyone that his bill targeting teachers was not a Dont Say Gay Law and was not animated by anti-homosexual bias, his press secretary Christina Pushaw declared that the bill would be more accurately described as an Anti-Grooming Bill, adding, If youre against the Anti-Grooming Bill, you are probably a groomer. A groomer, for those who are fortunate enough not to know, is a child predator who manipulates his victims to prepare them to accept abuse.

So much for being the sane Trump.

The idea that gay teachers are predators preparing to groom children is an old trope with a history in Florida. You may recall that previous iterations of the culture war attempted to ban homosexuals from teaching jobs. But more significant is the way this claim taps into the QAnon conspiracy theory. The whole base of QAnon is the dangerous delusion that their enemies are all secret pedophiles. This is the line that has been taken up by conservatives and endlessly repeated, including in a conservative campaign to boycott the Walt Disney Company (and also to subject it to land-use and antitrust regulations) as a political reprisal for opposing the Florida law. And why not if, as authoritarian conservative Rod Dreher puts it, Disney has gone groomer?

Taking a bill with many serious problemsa vaguely worded restriction and an enforcement mechanism designed to facilitate legal harassmentand characterizing any criticism of it as grooming and as support for pedophiles and predators has created an atmosphere of constant, vicious defamation aimed at any and all opponents. This is being egged on, of course, by the usual unscrupulous carnival barkers.

This mode of conspiracy thinking was also reflected in the scurrilous conduct of the Senate hearings for Ketanji Brown Jackson, when Senator Josh Hawley pandered to the QAnon vote by trying to portray the judges past sentencing work as soft on pedophiles. Many people, including conservative authors such as National Reviews Andrew McCarthy, have debunked the smear, showing that Judge Jacksons sentences were in line with the consensus view of other judges.

But once given this talking point, the crazies will chant it forever as if it is the gospel truth. Except that practically everyone is one of the crazies now. Hence the spectacle of Mollie Hemingway, of the Federalist and Fox News, trying her hardest to imply that Mitt Romney is a secret pedophile.

Which makes as much sense as Eisenhower being a secret communist.

From the top down, the Birchers have won. They now own the conservative movement and the Republican party.

Conspiracy theories have consequences. If you have been arguing these issues on social media, you will find that in among the groomer smears lobbed around carelessly there is an undertone of menace, with reminders that we know what to do with pedophiles. Before this is all over, someone is going to take this groomer and pedo talk literally. There will be blood.

We should also remember what conservatives accomplished by purging their crazies the last time around: By basing the movement on substantive ideas and having the courage and self-discipline to purge the kooks who claimed to be on our side, we achieved a few little things like pulling the U.S. out of the national malaise of the 1970s and winning the Cold War, followed by a period of peace, prosperity, and the spread of free societies across the globe. It wasnt just good for the movement, it was good for the country and the world.

If we want to experience anything like those triumphs again, we need build new institutions defined by pro-liberty ideasand we need to push the conspiracy theorists back to the fringes.

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Boris Johnsons Covid bravado insults the NHS and the public – The Guardian

Posted: at 12:11 pm

Matthew Taylor, who leads the NHS Confederation, rightly points to the consequences of the governments living without restrictions ideology (Covid threat being ignored in England for ideological reasons, say NHS leaders, 11 April). Boris Johnson sympathises with the libertarian ideologues in his party who like to invoke Ayn Rand. Perhaps they should note the warning attributed to her that we can evade reality, but we cannot evade the consequences of evading reality.

The insulting response from a No 10 spokesperson to Taylors accusation that the NHS feels abandoned shows that Johnson hopes to defy reality, as he has throughout the pandemic. To add further insult, the No 10 spokesperson adds that we are now able to manage [Covid] as we do with other respiratory infections, despite the NHSs daily experience blowing a hole in such Bolsonaro-esque bravado. Calum PatonEmeritus professor of public policy, Keele University

Having followed the progress of the pandemic in the UK closely, I am amazed at the relaxed attitude the government has to a death toll that equates to a Lockerbie disaster daily, or the total number of UK deaths in the Falklands conflict. I am appalled that the governments response is to close their eyes and put their collective fingers in their ears while all the time humming la-la-la-de-da. Public interest has waned to an unfortunate level.

The press should be making more noise. Perhaps refining the death statistics to show the age distribution of the current deaths would personalise the numbers. Perhaps people would then feel vulnerable and act more cautiously, to the benefit of all of us.David HastingsBalbeggie, Perthshire

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Science Fiction in a Time of Crisis – Filmmaker Magazine

Posted: at 12:11 pm

In 1968, Judith Merril and Kate Wilhelm planned to run an advertisement in a science fiction magazine with a list of authors announcing their opposition to the Vietnam War. But when they reached out to fellow members of the Science Fiction Writers of America to add their names, Merril and Wilhelm were shocked. There were significant numbers of vehement pro-war authors in the community, and they also wished to share their views with the science fiction-reading public.

When the advertisement ran in Galaxy Science Fiction, it covered two full pages. On the right, the names of authors including Ursula K. Le Guin, Philip K. Dick, Thomas M. Disch, Samuel R. Delany and dozens more appeared under the statement We oppose the participation of the United States in the war in Vietnam. On the page to the left was another list of names, including Robert A. Heinlein, Leigh Brackett, Jerry Pournelle and Jack Vance, the undersigned who believed the United States must remain in Vietnam to fulfill its responsibilities to the people of that country.

While there were more traditional science fiction writers in the anti-war section, like Ray Bradbury, Gene Roddenberry and Isaac Asimov, the two petitions broadly signaled a generational split: Golden Age science fiction and the writing that happened next. The legacy of those who departed from the mainstream continues to this day, but at the time, these writers were emerging and relatively obscure: Le Guin published her first novel two years before, and Delany was only 26 years old. Science fiction, to these writers, was the ideal vessel for [] refusal of established power and social relations, Iain McIntyre and Andrew Nette write in the introduction to a new anthology they edited, Dangerous Visions and New Worlds: Radical Science Fiction, 1950-1985. In the wake of Hiroshima, and as outer space became a frontier for the Cold War, these writers understood that scientific breakthroughs could be militarized. They were concerned with threats to the environment, and their stories were more likely to explore technology as a ruinous force, as well as address issues of race, class, sexuality and gender. Unlike the Golden Age gee-whiz stories of white male heroes conquering space and solving problems with gizmos, theirs was science fiction infused with the countercultures pansexuality, communal lifestyles, hallucinogens and radical politics. An outlaw sensibility runs through the work featured in the bookwhich ranges from genius to campyand audiences were receptive to it. Even the most extraordinary and strange writing could be commercially successful (Delanys Dhalgren, for example, has sold more than a million copies). The breadth of this anthology underscores what unites these disparate authors: Each writer expanded the genre itself and what material might be considered science fiction.

Key figures featured in the book have strongly influenced writers and filmmakers working today. The Babadook director Jennifer Kent is working on a project based on the life of Alice Sheldon, who wrote science fiction under the pen name James Tiptree Jr. The influence of Ira Levin, author of The Stepford Wives and Rosemarys Baby, is apparent in Jordan Peeles films. Ted Chiangs Story of Your Life, adapted into the film Arrival, appears heavily influenced by Delaneys Babel-17, and the author studied with Disch at Clarion, the revered science fiction writing workshop. Contemporary writers, including Neil Gaiman and China Miville, speak frequently about the influence of the New Wave on their work.

Likewise, Octavia Butler has ascended from cult writer to legend in our time. The author, profiled by Michael A. Gonzales in Dangerous Visions and New Worlds, wrote far-out science fiction in an earthy and grounded style. Butler was shy, dyslexic and thought to be slow as a child by her teachers; in adulthood, she worked minimum-wage jobs and was a self-described hermit. But she contained universes and flourished on the page, dazzling readers with her confident yet unpretentious voice, her humane gift for rendering complex characters and the sheer marvel of her imagination. Butler wrote about racism and structural inequalities with force as the most prominent Black woman science-fiction writer of the era. In recent years, Butlers 1993 novel Parable of the Sower has come to be regarded as a twentieth-century speculative classic on par with George Orwells 1984 and Margaret Atwoods The Handmaids Tale. The novel movingly depicts community resilience during societal collapse with startling prescience, including a fascist leader who pledges to make America great again. The author hit the New York Times Best Seller list for the first time in 2020 with Parable, and A24 has a film adaptation in the works, with Garrett Bradley set to direct. Thats just one of a number of Butler projects, which also include Wild Seed, in development with Viola Daviss production company, JuVee, and Dawn, with Ava DuVernays ARRAY Filmworks. A series based on Butlers Kindred is forthcoming from FX, with a pilot directed by Janicza Bravo.

The influence of Damnation Alleyboth the 1969 Roger Zelazny novel and its loose film adaptation, directed by Jack Smight in 1977is explored in an essay by Kelly Roberts. The novel is a blend of Hells Angels culture, western and nuclear holocaust tale. Like its contemporaries Mad Max (1979) and A Boy and His Dog (1975), adapted from the 1969 Harlan Ellison novella, it presents the desert as a natural post-apocalyptic backdrop. The premise, in which a criminal is offered a full pardon if he should successfully make his way through a wasteland and save the world, likewise influenced Escape from New York (1981). The Landmaster created for the film is a fully operative vehicle that is regularly displayed in car showswhen it isnt parked in the lot of a Southern California auto body shop as a roadside attraction. Teslas Cybertruck looks like it was drawn with the vehicles menacing geometric form in mind.

The title Dangerous Visions and New Worlds is a nod to two notable publications of the era: the magazine New Worlds, edited by Michael Moorcock from 1964 onward, which published edgy, genre-crossing material by J.G. Ballard and others, and the two Dangerous Visions anthologies edited by Harlan Ellison. (A final installment, The Last Dangerous Visions, announced in 1973, has become legendary for its lengthy and rancorous delayseven after Ellisons death in 2018, his estate has claimed it will still be published.) Norman Spinrad, quoted in the book, says that in the Golden Age, science fiction was edited as if it were stuff for teenagers, or more accurately, what librarians thought teenagers should be able to read. Ellison and Moorcock, however, were open to experimentation and wild ideas as editors.

But the next generation wasnt a free-for-all, either; Moorcock was clear about what he didnt want. In his 1977 essay Starship Stormtroopers, the New Worlds editor identified the crypto-fascists from which his writers had made a break: There is Lovecraft, the misogynic racist; there is Heinlein, the authoritarian militarist; there is Ayn Rand, the rabid opponent of trade unionism and the left, who, like many a reactionary before her, sees the problems of the world as a failure by capitalists to assume the responsibilities of good leadership; there is Tolkien and that group of middle-class Christian fantasists [] To all these and more the working class is a mindless beast which must be controlled or it will savage the world.

The Golden Age didnt have a function; it wasnt attacking much, Moorcock said in February 2022, when he appeared at a virtual symposium for the anthology hosted by the City Lights Bookstore. We were trying to change science fiction to something that was more political, the author Marge Piercy said on another panel, noting that she was first drawn to the genre as a college student in the 1950s. We thought we were all going to die, she said, and science fiction, unlike mainstream literature, addressed these anxieties.

Our presentthe future in these books cited in Dangerous Visions and New Worldsis no utopia. Piercy, in her 2016 introduction to Woman on the Edge of Time, says that in the years since her 1976 novel was published, inequality has greatly increased [] more people are poor, more people are working two or three jobs just to get by. But the genre itself has improved in time: These writers expanded our imaginations and forged a path for intergenerational fellow travelers.

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The criticism facing Rishi Sunak has nothing to do with race, and all to do with greed – iNews

Posted: at 12:11 pm

As dishy Rishi loses his sheen and glow, his enthusiastic champions group and defend his reputation.

The Independent broke the story last week about the complicated (and murky and secret) tax and citizenship arrangements of the Chancellor and his wife Akshata Murty, the daughter of a multimillionaire. In brief, she had non-dom status to keep down tax bills; its claimed he was listed as a beneficiary of offshore trusts (though he denies any knowledge of this) and he held the coveted American green card until October 2021.

After days of bad press, she has now decided to pay UK tax on her overseas income and he has referred himself to the Rt Hon Lord Geidt, the independent adviser on ministers affairs, that same establishment toff who decided that Boris Johnson did not break the ministerial code when he accepted 58,000 from a Tory donor to refurbish the flat at 10 Downing Street.

Sunak and Murty loyalists are attempting to discredit those who put out the story and to attribute unsavoury motives to those who are rightly scandalised.

Last week, a furious Indian-British friend rang me to say that the Sunaks were being picked on because they were brown. I told her they were tax-avoiders and his policies punished the poor. She called me a race traitor.

I tweeted about this insulting exchange and had a vile email from a supporter of the Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, accusing me of being an anti-Hindu Muslim. On the BBC news on Saturday night, an erstwhile Tory press officer said that the uproar was caused by the politics of envy.

Time to take on and see off these groundless and dangerous perceptions. What is happening to Mr and Mrs Sunak is not an example of racism or ethnic or religious prejudice; it is not proof of sexism, nor an example of class envy. Finally and most emphatically, it is not a sinister plot by officials to oust a brilliant politician.

Sunaks assertion that, like Will Smith, he was a husband trying to stop his wife from being disrespected, sounded manipulative and hollow. Envious communists are not behind the scandal. The most bitter politics of envy are found in his rarefied, high-brow world. Those with far too much perpetually envy those who are higher up the rich lists.

Now it has been reported that Sunak wants the authorities to catch and punish the insider who leaked this information to the press. This suggests that he is irredeemably vindictive and entitled. Apparently, the financial affairs of the powerful and rich have to be tightly guarded secrets. The lower orders have no such expectations or rights.

In my view, this is a salutary tale of insatiable, extreme greed, of how those at the top of the social pyramid are forever looking for ways to pay the least possible amount of tax into the public purse; of the ruling Tories really believing that they have no duty to the nation and, even more offensively, that ordinary people must be squeezed and terrorised by fiscal prudence while the richest Cabinet members we have ever had, and their loaded mates, are exempt from any kind of fiscal accountability.

Sajid Javid confessed this weekend that he too was a non-dom during the years that he was raking in millions as a City banker. Why did he need to do that? Read above. He, like other hard Tories, is an ardent fan of Ayn Rand, the US philosopher who disdained collective rights and propagated ethical egotism or the virtue of selfishness.

Sunak voted against tightening financial regulation to combat abusive tax avoidance and either abstained from or voted against human rights and equality laws (check out the website TheyWorkForYou.com).

Did he support Brexit because the EU was clamping down on banks, law and accountancy firms which facilitated offshore tax-avoidance schemes? Just asking.

Now Murty has announced that she appreciates the British sense of fairness and will pay UK tax on all her income. But questions remain. Will Sunak and Murty now offer full transparency about all of their financial affairs?

Such people need to learn they cannot have it all. But such people will never learn that lesson. Sunak will get over this. He may even be Prime Minister one day. Being this rich means never having to take responsibility.

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US intelligence-gathering payloads awaiting launch on SpaceX rocket Spaceflight Now – Spaceflight Now

Posted: at 12:10 pm

EDITORS NOTE:Updated with launch delay to Saturday, April 16.

SpaceX plans to launch a Falcon 9 rocket from Californias Central Coast just before sunrise Saturday, boosting a classified cargo into orbit for the National Reconnaissance Office on what is widely believed to be a naval reconnaissance mission.

The Falcon 9 rocket is set to take off from Vandenberg Space Force Base, a military base on the Pacific coastline northwest of Los Angeles, at 6:27 a.m. PDT (9:27 a.m. EDT; 1327 GMT) Saturday. SpaceX announced late Thursday the launch was being delayed to no earlier than Saturday, allowing time to complete pre-launch checkouts and data reviews.

The National Reconnaissance Office has not disclosed details about the the mission, codenamed NROL-85. With rare exceptions, the NRO typically keeps specifics about its launches secret. The agency owns the U.S. governments fleet of intelligence-gathering spy satellites, supplying optical and radar surveillance imagery, eavesdropping capabilities, and data relay support.

While were unable to discuss the specifics of this launch, we can confirm that we will have more than a half-dozen launches scheduled and a dozen payloads planned for orbit in 2022, said Nathan Potter, an NRO spokesperson. We can also confirm NRO is the only organization launching as part of the NROL-85 mission, and there are no rideshares.

The NRO also develops and launches satellites to locate and track the movements of ships. Theres a broad consensus among independent analysts that the NROL-85 mission will add two new spacecraft to the U.S. governments naval reconnaissance satellite fleet.

Ted Molczan, an expert tracker of military satellites, told Spaceflight Now hes 100 percent sure the payloads on the NROL-85 mission launching Friday are the next pair of Intruder-class ship-locating spacecraft.

The circumstances of the NROL-85 mission its target altitude, inclination, and launch time all point to the Falcon 9 rocket carrying the next pair of Intruder naval reconnaissance satellites, experts said. The Intruder spacecraft are are sometimes calledNaval Ocean Surveillance System, or NOSS, satellites.

The U.S. military, which oversees launch procurement for NRO missions, awarded SpaceX a contract for the NROL-85 launch in 2019. In military procurement documents, officials disclosed the NROL-85 mission would aim to place its payloads into an orbit between 636 miles and 758 miles (1,024 by 1,221 kilometers) in altitude, with an inclination of 63.5 degrees to the equator.

Those orbital parameters match with the known altitude and inclination of previous Intruder satellites. Airspace and maritime warning notices associated with the Falcon 9 launch Saturday confirm the rocket will follow a trajectory southeast from Vandenberg, lining up with the expect 63.5-degree inclination target orbit.

The NROL-85 mission is almost certainly hauling the next pair Intruder, or NOSS, satellites into orbit, according to Marco Langbroek, a Dutch archaeologist and an expert in satellite movements.

The Intruder satellites collect data used by the U.S. Navy and government intelligence agencies.

They geolocate shipping on the high seas, by detecting their radio/radar emissions, Langbroek wrote on his website. They always operate in close pairs.

Whats more, the time of Saturdays launch closely matches the time the orbital plane of an older pair of Intruder satellites passes over Vandenberg, suggesting the two new spacecraft could be replacements, according to Langbroek.

Recent launches that lofted NRO naval surveillance satellites used United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket. The most recent pair of Intruder satellites launched on an Atlas 5 from Vandenberg in 2017, and the two satellites tracking near Vandenberg around the the of Fridays launch were deployed by an Atlas 5 in 2012.

For Saturdays mission, SpaceX will use a Falcon 9 booster that flew on its first mission Feb. 2 on a previous dedicated launch for the NRO.

SpaceX landed the reusable booster back at Vandenberg shortly after the Feb. 2 launch. Technicians refurbished the rocket designated B1071 in SpaceXs inventory for its second flight on the NROL-85 mission around 10 weeks later.

After separating from the Falcon 9s upper stage, the rocket booster will return again to Landing Zone 4, just a quarter mile west of the Falcon 9 launch pad, for a propulsive touchdown about eight minutes after liftoff.

The upper stage will ignite its single engine nearly two-and-a-half minutes into the flight as the rocket heads downrange southeast from Vandenberg over the Pacific Ocean. The second stage will guide the NROL-85 payloads into a preliminary orbit, then another upper stage engine burn is expected to inject the satellites into their targeted separation orbit.

The detailed timeline of the Falcon 9 mission hasnt been released by SpaceX, honoring a request from the NRO to keep that information secret. SpaceXs live launch webcast will focus on the first stage boosters return to Earth, and the upper stages maneuvers will occur in a government-ordered news blackout standard operating procedure for the NRO.

The NROL-85 mission will mark SpaceXs 14th Falcon 9 launch of 2022, and the third this year from Vandenberg Space Force Base. It will be the 148th flight of a Falcon 9 rocket since SpaceX debuted the workhorse launcher in June 2010.

SpaceX will follow the NRO mission with two more Falcon 9 launches from Florida next week. Another batch of Starlink internet satellites is scheduled to launch from Cape Canaveral Space Force Base on April 21, followed by a liftoff April 23 from NASAs Kennedy Space Center with the next crew heading to the International Space Station.

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SpaceX Pushes Spaceflight Inc. Out the Airlock – The Motley Fool

Posted: at 12:10 pm

Bowman:Open the pod bay doors, HAL.HAL 9000:I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that. -- 2001: A Space Odyssey

Like astronaut Dave Bowman on Discovery One, space logistics company Spaceflight Inc. found itself on the wrong side of the airlock last month -- and without an option to get back in. Spaceflight's problem wasn't a homicidal computer, though. Instead, Spaceflight found itself pitted against space industry behemoth SpaceX, and its stranglehold on the market for small satellite launches.

Image source: Getty Images.

I hate to say "I told you so," but I really did predict this would happen -- three years ago, in fact.

For those not familiar with the company, Spaceflight Inc. began as a subsidiary of Spaceflight Industries, and soon began to build itself a business reselling "extra" payload capacity aboard other companies' rockets. When a customer hired SpaceX, for example, to launch a satellite that wasn't quite big enough to fill up a Falcon 9 rocket fairing, Spaceflight Inc. would step in, buy the extra capacity, and then resell it to customers with smaller satellites, shoehorning their satellites into the remaining space before liftoff.

Spaceflight called the concept "rideshare," and it was a booming business for a while. SpaceX focused on what it did best (space launch); Spaceflight played to its own competitive advantage -- logistics -- and both companies profited thereby.

Business boomed -- that is to say, until SpaceX decided this business was so good that it would start organizing some rideshares of its own in 2019. It only took Spaceflight Industries six months to read the writing on the wall, and decide that its partnership with SpaceX had a fatal flaw -- that one day, SpaceX might decide to keep all of the profits from rideshare for itself, and jettison its partner.

And so, in 2020, Spaceflight Industries sold Spaceflight Inc. to a consortium of Japan's Mitsui & Co. and Yamasa Co, and exited the business.

Fast forward to 2022. On Friday, April 1, SpaceX launched its fourth-ever Falcon 9 rocket mission dedicated entirely to putting large numbers of various companies' small satellites into orbit -- "Transporter-4." In one single launch, SpaceX sent up "40 spacecraft, including CubeSats, microsats, picosats, non-deploying hosted payloads, and an orbital transfer vehicle carrying spacecraft to be deployed at a later time." Among these three dozen-odd satellites were four Kleos Space Patrol Mission Earth imaging satellites, whose passage had been arranged by Spaceflight.

But as it turns out, this was to be Spaceflight's final mission in cooperation with SpaceX. On March 21, 10 days before Transporter-4 lifted off, SpaceNews.com reported that "SpaceX is severing ties with launch services company Spaceflight Inc. after years of working closely together."

Commenting on the announcement -- which SpaceX sent it by text! -- Spaceflight VP Jodi Sorensen exclaimed that "we were surprised to learn of it" and "were not given any insight into the reasoning behind the decision." But it's not hard to figure out what happened here.

Over three years, multiple "Starlink" launches incorporating rideshare satellites, and four dedicated "Transporter" missions, SpaceX got the hang of how rideshares work -- and no longer needed Spaceflight's help to resell its extra payload room. What's more, as SpaceNews points out, Spaceflight generally charges less to integrate a customer's satellite than the $1 million base price (recently raised to $1.1 million) that SpaceX charges when signing up a rideshare customer directly -- and then takes a cut of that lower price.

By cutting Spaceflight out of the loop, therefore, SpaceX found a way to do the same rideshare work, charge more for it -- and then keep the whole price for itself. And granted, charging $1.1 million for a tiny satellite launch may not sound like much. But at a nominal $67 million price tag for launching a Falcon 9's main cargo, each extra $1.1 million SpaceX can charge for a rideshare adds 1.6% to the company's revenues, almost all of which falls to SpaceX's bottom line.

But what does this mean for Spaceflight? The loss of SpaceX as a customer will definitely hurt, but Spaceflight still has lots of other customers-not-named-SpaceX to work with to get its customers' satellites into orbit -- Rocket Lab, Arianespace, and theIndian Space Research Organization ("India's NASA") just to name a few.

Ultimately, I expect that this split between SpaceX and Spaceflight will end up helping the former, without necessarily putting the latter out of business just yet.

This article represents the opinion of the writer, who may disagree with the official recommendation position of a Motley Fool premium advisory service. Were motley! Questioning an investing thesis even one of our own helps us all think critically about investing and make decisions that help us become smarter, happier, and richer.

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Elon Musk offers to buy Twitter for a reported $43 billion in cash – Space.com

Posted: at 12:10 pm

Elon Musk wants to buy Twitter.

The billionaire founder and CEO of SpaceX, who also runs Tesla, announced his bid to buy the social media company Thursday (April 14) on the Twitter platform itself and shared a link to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing he submitted as part of the process.

"I made an offer," Elon Musk wrote on Twitter, where he has over 80 million followers.

Musk laid out his plan for what could be the ultimate Twitter takeover in a letter to Bret Taylor, the chair of Twitter's board and Salesforce co-CEO. In the letter, Musk offered to buy 100% of Twitter for $54.20 per share in cash. The SpaceX CEO already owns a 9.2% stake in Twitter, which was announced earlier this month. If the sale goes through, Musk would pay $43 billion in cash to buy Twitter, according to Reuters.

"I invested in Twitter as I believe in its potential to be the platform for free speech around the globe, and I believe free speech is a societal imperative for a functioning democracy," Musk wrote in the letter. "However, since making my investment I now realize the company will neither thrive nor serve this societal imperative in its current form. Twitter needs to be transformed as a private company."

Related: 8 ways SpaceX has transformed spaceflight

Musk wrote that his offer to buy Twitter represented a 54% premium over what he paid for his initial stake, and a 385% premium over Twitter's stock price from just before his first investment was announced.

"My offer is my best and final offer and if it is not accepted, I would need to reconsider my position as a shareholder," Musk wrote in the letter. "Twitter has extraordinary potential. I will unlock it."

Musk is a prolific Twitter user who regularly uses the platform to share updates on SpaceX and Tesla operations, his personal thoughts on current events along with jokes, images and memes. At times, Musk's Twitter use has led to trouble, like in 2018 when the SEC sued the billionaire for fraud over a tweet in August of that year in which he wrote that he had secured funding to take Tesla, a public company, private at $420 per share.

Musk and Tesla each paid a reported $20 million fine to settle the dispute with the SEC.

According to Forbes, Musk is currently the richest person in the world and has a current net worth of about $302 billion, about a third more than his space rival Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon and Blue Origin, who has a net worth of about $194 billion.

Email Tariq Malik attmalik@space.comor follow him@tariqjmalik. Follow us@Spacedotcom,FacebookandInstagram.

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Fact Check: SpaceX and its AI Capabilities Outperforming NASA? – Analytics Insight

Posted: at 12:10 pm

Where does AI exactly come to play in SpaceXs day-to-day operations and on rockets?

Space travel has entered another period. However, government organizations, for example, NASA and Roscosmos were liable for fostering the underlying innovation expected to fly people into space, privately owned businesses, for example, SpaceX is currently initiating the improvement of the next generation of reusable space shuttles (as well as assembling an assortment of other space-bound equipment such as satellites). However, even as the business space race has barely started, SpaceX has arisen in front of the opposition, landing a US$2.9 billion contract with NASA to build a moon lander. This follows a US$7 billion agreement with NASA to ship supplies to and from the International Space Station settled in 2020. At the heart of SpaceXs success lies data. From planning a vehicle that will endure the cruel states of room to working out payload size, information is filling the following influx of space travel.

Similar to modern airplanes, SpaceX utilizes an Artificial Intelligence fueled autopilot program to explore them securely from send-off to the ISS docking port. According to Community AI, Artificial Intelligence works by ascertaining parabolic flight, fuel utilization and reserves, liquid engine sloshing, weather, and a number of other factors that can impact the flight. Artificial Intelligence uses this information to establish the safest as well as the fastest flight path. Once the ship has reached its destination, the autopilot uses convex optimization algorithms and computer vision to determine the best landing spot for the Dragon capsule.

However subtleties on this specific task are meager, SpaceXs emergency abort system also utilizes AI to - in case of a catastrophic event - disengage the shuttle from the rocket and securely guide space explorers back to earth.

Like the Dragon, SpaceXs shuttle, its satellites also use AI to guide through space debris and travel to and from the earth. Notwithstanding its success, SpaceXs automated system for avoiding satellite crashes has ignited discussion. In the past 2-3 years, SpaceXs Starlink satellites have had a number of close calls, almost crashing into other satellites. In addition, its competitors say they have no way of knowing which way the system will move a Starlink satellite in the event of a close approach, making collision avoidance on their end nearly impossible.

What makes them different than their government rivals like NASA? SpaceX combines modern, cutting edge technology such as AI into their rockets capabilities and expands upon what hasnt changed in the space industry for half a century. SpaceX, which operates out of Hawthorne, California sets its own self-imposed deadlines and has an aggressive work schedule, while also being able to launch its rockets time in and time out since they are a private organization and dont have government-imposed guidelines or restrictions (besides flying a safe rocket).

Since the inauguration of SpaceX, the company has accomplished a reusable and self-landing booster section of its rockets. This allows them to keep costs at a minimum since they are able to use their manufacturing less often. Typical space travel organizations discard their rocket after the flight, costing billions of dollars every time this happens.

SpaceX is also credited with the worlds most powerful rocket fuel and engines. The Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy, and Starship use liquid oxygen, refined kerosene, and other novel chemical compounds or reactions in order to create 5 million pounds of thrust at lift-off.

Additionally, they have near perfected the desirable sci-fi movie capsule for payloads for humans or cargo. The Dragon has made 20 ISS flights and resupply missions combined and is capable of holding 7 passengers. The Dragon capsule combines state-of-the-art modern architecture techniques in order to create a sleek interior design that feels like a luxury vehicle. They have also revamped the controls from the many buttons, switches, and control pads in standard industrial rockets to touch screens with controls simple to use, just like playing a mobile game on an iPad.

The most revolutionary, or perhaps prescient, data-related undertaking SpaceX is currently involved with is its collection of space data. Space data a.k.a. big data from space is a term used to describe the camera and sensor information gathered by space-borne monitoring equipment (satellites) and the process of extrapolating patterns using analytical software. As the commercialization of space becomes a reality, space data and analytics will become increasingly valuable.

NASA is getting ready to send astronauts to explore more of the Moon as part of the Artemis program, and the agency has selected SpaceX to continue the development of the first commercial human lander that will safely carry the next two American astronauts to the lunar surface. At least one of those astronauts will make history as the first woman on the Moon. Another goal of the Artemis program includes landing the first person of color on the lunar surface.

The agencys powerful Space Launch System rocket will launch four astronauts aboard the Orion spacecraft for their multi-day journey to lunar orbit. There, two crew members will transfer to the SpaceX human landing system (HLS) for the final leg of their journey to the surface of the Moon. After approximately a week of exploring the surface, they will board the lander for their short trip back to orbit where they will return to Orion and their colleagues before heading back to Earth.

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Fact Check: SpaceX and its AI Capabilities Outperforming NASA? - Analytics Insight

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Elon Musks life story: the highs and lows of the Tesla and SpaceX boss – Euronews

Posted: at 12:10 pm

With his offer to buy Twitter for $43 billion (39.8 billion), Elon Musk may end up controlling the social media platform that contributed to his rise to fame.

Musk is the richest person in the world with a fortune of $262 billion (240 billion), but it wasnt plain sailing for the South-African entrepreneur. There were multiple bumps along the road.

Despite being at the helm of companies like Tesla and SpaceX, he was ousted multiple times from his own enterprises, had numerous rocket crashes and it was a slow start before his electric vehicles (EVs) really took off.

Heres a look back at the various failures and successes underpinning his controversial image.

Elon Musk was born on June 28, 1971, in Pretoria, South Africa.

His first business venture was at the age of 12 when he sold the code for the PC space-fighting game Blastar for $500 (460) to the magazine PC and Office Technology. "[It was] a trivial game... but better than Flappy Bird," Musk said.

After graduating high school in South Africa, he moved to Canada, where he studied at Queens University in Kingston in Ontario for two years.

But he finished his studies in the United States at the University of Pennsylvania and earned a degree in physics and economics.

To pay for rent while he was a student in Pennsylvania, Musk and a classmate rented a 10-bedroom frat house and transformed it into a nightclub.

Musk then studied for his PhD at Stanford University but dropped out of the programme just two days after it began and decided to work in the dot-com bubble.

Musk then founded Zip2 with his brother Kimbal in 1995. It was Musks first enterprise and it provided online city guide software to newspapers. With no money, Musk actually lived in the office.

As the business took off, the company Compaq bought Zip2 in a deal worth over $300 million (278 million).

In 1999, Musk then launched X.com, an online banking company. A year later, X.com merged with the Peter Thiel-founded financial start-up Confinity, and PayPal was formed.

Musk was then named PayPals CEO, but that didnt last long. After many disagreements over branding and micro-managing, Musk was fired from PayPal in 2000 while he was on holiday in Australia. Musk told Fortune years later: Thats the problem with vacations.

But he still had a stake in PayPal, and when eBay bought the company in 2002, Musk took home $165 million (150 million).

With $100 million of the PayPal money, he founded the company Space Exploration Technologies, better known as SpaceX, in 2002. His goal was to make spaceflight 10 times cheaper.

Proving the critics wrong, SpaceX began developing the Dragon space capsule in late 2004. It was called Dragon in a jab at those who said he couldnt do it, in a reference to the song Puff the Magic Dragon.

In 2010, the spacecraft made its maiden voyage and became the first commercially built and operated spacecraft to be recovered successfully from orbit.

But Musk was also making moves on Earth. In 2004, Musk began investing in the electric car company Tesla. He took an active role in the company and helped develop the first all-electric car, the Roadster. In 2006, Musk was appointed as Teslas chairman.

During this time, Musk came up with the idea for the energy company SolarCity, which he put his cousins in charge of in 2006. Tesla would later buy the company in a deal worth $2.6 billion (2.3 billion).

In 2007, Musk staged a coup at Teslas boardroom and ousted Martin Eberhard as CEO and then from the board.

A year later during the financial crisis, Tesla got a $40 million (36 million) lifeline to save it from bankruptcy, raised by investors and also from Musk's personal fortune.

Musk was then named Teslas CEO.

Neither SpaceX, Tesla, nor SolarCity were doing well and were losing money. Musk was living off personal loans to survive.

But by December 2008, SpaceX won a $1.5 billion (1.3 billion) contract with NASA to deliver supplies into space.

Meanwhile, Tesla secured more outside investors and in 2010, Tesla held an initial public offering and raised $226 million (209 million).

During this time, SpaceX set many records and supplied the International Space Station multiple times. The company also built the Falcon 9, SpaceXs most powerful rocket.

Musk also pursued other ideas. In 2013 he published a white paper on a Hyperloop high-speed train that could in theory transport passengers from Los Angeles to San Francisco in 30 minutes.

In 2015, Musk co-founded OpenAI, a non-profit research company aiming to ensure artificial intelligence benefits humanity. He later stepped down from the board to avoid conflicts with Tesla, which is building its own AI for self-driving cars.

In 2016, Musk started The Boring Company, which aims to build a network of tunnels both underground and around cities for high-speed travel.

In 2017, Musk founded Neuralink, which develops devices to be implanted inside human brains.

In 2008, Musk divorced his then-wife Justine. Their first son died of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) at 10 weeks old. The couple later had twin and triplet boys.

In 2020, Musk and the singer Grimes had a son, called X A-12, or X for short. In 2021, he had a daughter with Grimes via surrogate called Exa Dark Siderl Musk, who goes by Y.

Musk is all for procreation and said in 2021 that rapidly declining birth rates are one of the biggest risks to civilisation... I cant emphasize this enough, there are not enough people.

Musk has made controversial comments. In 2018, he offered to build a submarine to rescue 12 boys and their football coach who were stuck in a cave in Thailand. A British diver said Musks actions were a PR stunt. In response, Musk called the diver a Pedo guy on Twitter.

He also made a series of false claims on Twitter over coronavirus. He first called COVID-19 dumb and falsely claims that children are "essentially immune" to the virus. He also falsely claims on Twitter that the malaria drug chloroquine could be a possible COVID treatment.

Musk also got into trouble with authorities in 2018 after he said on Twitter he was considering taking Tesla private at $420 (386) per share, adding: "Funding secured".

The Securities and Exchange Commission filed a lawsuit against Musk, accusing him of making false and misleading statements. Musk settled with the SEC and he and Tesla each paid a $20 million (18 million) fine. Tesla was also ordered to appoint a committee to oversee Musks communications.

In 2020, SpaceX partnered with NASA to launch astronauts into space and the company had its first operational human spaceflight, sending four astronauts to the ISS. The same year, Tesla joined the S&P 500.

Meanwhile, Musk and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos were feuding over NASA contracts being granted to SpaceX and not Blue Origin for satellite projects.

In 2021, Musk ruffled a few feathers in the Bitcoin community.

Tesla said it would accept Bitcoin as payment and fill the companys coffers with $1.5 billion (1.2 billion) in the cryptocurrency. But Musk later made a U-turn over the environmental concerns of Bitcoin mining and met with miners to try and convince them to turn to greener ways.

In April 2022, Musk bought a 9.2 per cent stake in Twitter, making him the biggest shareholder. But he will not join the board. Meanwhile, former Twitter shareholders in the United States have decided to sue him for allegedly delaying his stake in the social media company so he could buy more of the stock at lower prices.

On April 14, 2022, Musk offered to buy all of the remaining shares in Twitter in a bid valuing the company at $43 billion (nearly 40 billion).

In a letter to Twitter's chairman, Musk said the company needed to be transformed into a private company to become "the platform for free speech around the globe".

"Twitter has extraordinary potential. I will unlock it," he said.

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